Works by Robert Ludlum with their own trope pages include:

Other works by Robert Ludlum provide examples of:

Bedmate Reveal: Toyed with in The Arctic Event. Randi Russell wakes up naked in a sleeping bag with not only Jon Smith, but also Valentina Metrace. Despite her understandable surprise, there was no hanky-panky. They were trying to keep her from dying of hypothermia after she was out in Arctic blizzard conditions without protective clothing. Doesn't stop someone making a joke, though.

Val: It's alright, darling. Nobody waits until marriage anymore.

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Crack Fic: The Road To Gandolfo was supposed to be a serious thriller about a retired general who kidnaps the pope... until Ludlum realised that he couldn't possibly take the story seriously and rewrote it as a parody of his own work.

Engaging Conversation: In The Road to Omaha, main viewpoint character Sam Devereaux meets a beautiful fellow lawyer and more-or-less instantly falls in love, proposing before they've even exchanged names. She's naturally appalled, but then just a few minutes later, something he says strikes her as so inspiring that she proposes to him.

Forgets to Eat: A Mad Scientist in The Sigma Protocol, has only two modes: on his meds, he remembers to eat and sleep. Off his meds, he concocts insanely brilliant schemes and invents wacky contraptions.

Mad Lib Thriller Title: The Ambler Warning, The Apocalypse Watch, The Aquitaine Progression, The Bancroft Strategy , The Chancellor Manuscript, The Gemini Contenders, The Holcroft Covenant, The Icarus Agenda, The Janson Directive, The Matarese Circle, The Matarese Countdown, The Matlock Paper, The Osterman Weekend, The Parsifal Mosaic, The Prometheus Deception, The Rhinemann Exchange, The Scarlatti Inheritance, The Scorpio Illusion, The Sigma Protocol, The Tristan Betrayal.

Reluctant Ruler: The protagonist of The Icarus Agenda entered politics out of a genuine desire to help his constituency and only intends to stay in as long as he's needed; he doesn't desire power for its own sake and has no intention of seeking higher office. This is said to be one of the reasons he's good at what he does, and that he's more deserving of higher office than other characters who do want it.

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Swiss Bank Account: In The Ostermann Weekend, the protagonist discovers that a man who may be a foreign spy has a Swiss bank account, and considers this to be Evidence, but it turns out that the man is innocent, and his response to being accused of having a Swiss bank account is basically, "Yes, I do. What's your point?"

In The Osterman Weekend, the progonist's mission to identify which of a group of people is a foreign spy was instigated by the real spy, who plans to use the noise made by the protagonist barking up one wrong tree after another as a useful distraction.

In The Prometheus Deception, Nick Bryson is an operative for the Directorate, a top-secret division of the U.S. government. Five years after his forced retirement, he's tracked down by the FBI director who informs him of the truth: The Directorate was founded by the KGB, Bryson's parents were killed to set him on this path, his foster "uncle" was an enemy operative and even his beloved girlfriend was in on it. Every single mission he risked his life for and felt proud of actually was working against U.S. interests and thus his entire life has been one grand lie to be used by the enemy.

Vicariously Ambitious: The conspiracy in The Icarus Agendaare Well-Intentioned Extremists who want America to have a good President, but recognise that the kind of person they have in mind would be unlikely to volunteer for high political office or to beat the more power-hungry and politically wily candidates if he did; their solution is to find a suitable candidate and manipulate his career without his knowledge. They're not after any gain for themselves beyond the general benefit to everybody of living in an America with a good President.

Why Couldn't You Be Different?: In The Janson Directive, Jessica Kincaid, a sniper hired to kill the protagonist who ultimately befriends him, explains that her single father effectively raised her as a boy, teaching her how to fix cars and hunt.

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